The Koan, Aporia, Plato, and Veeder

So in class the other day I mentioned the genre of the koan. I want to talk a little bit about this genre now as a way of helping us see what I think Veeder was trying to accomplish but also as a way of opening up our minds to different ways of thinking.

So the genre of the koan began in China during the T’ang era (618-917). It's described in this way by Stephen Heine, who edited a collection of the dialogues: “a brief, enigmatic anecdote or dialogue between two contesting parties" often involving "quixotic, paradoxical, and absurd utterances” which negate the possibility of logical thought processes and cause a “spiritual breakthrough to a realm beyond reason” (Heine 1). 

Here's another definition by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:

The work consists of narrated relationships between ancient Chinese teachers and their pupils, illustrating means employed to sublimate the dualistic, outgoing, generalizing, intellectualizing tendencies of students in order that they might realize their true nature. . . The whole intent was to help the pupil break the shell of his limited mind and attain a second eternal birth, satori, enlightenment. Each problem is a barrier. Those who have the spirit of Zen pass through it . . . as if they were seeing the unseen and living in the illimitable. (159-160)

And here's a short example of the form:

Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: “The flag is moving.” The other said: “The wind is moving.” The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by. He told them: “Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving.” (Reps 208).  

One tendency of Westerners is to compare the koan to the Greek rhetorical concept of aporia (Indeed, I spent a lot of time doing this in my M.A. thesis). So here's another definition for you: aporia: a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it (dictionary.com).

Definitely the concepts are related in interesting ways. But there's a crucial difference in how these ideas are appropriated in eastern and western discourses. Aporias in Western discourses are very much regulated by Plato's appropriation of the concept. For Plato, aporias are paths to knowledge, as illustrated in the Socratic dialogues, and the dialectical mode of elenchus employed within those dialogues. Aporias allow a pupil's discovery of their own ignorance and thus sets them in motion toward "truth." Here's a passage from Meno that begins with a pupil of Socrates experiencing aporia/ignorance when he can't answer a geometry problem. 

            Boy
Well, on my word, Socrates, I for one do not know.

            

            Socrates
There now, Meno, do you observe what progress he has already made in his recollection? At first he did not know what is the line that forms the figure of eight feet, and he does not know even now: but at any rate he thought he knew then, and confidently answered as though he knew, and was aware of no difficulty; whereas now he feels the difficulty he is in, and besides not knowing, does not think he knows.

            Meno
That is true.

            Socrates
And is he not better off in respect of the matter which he did not know?

            Meno
I think that too is so.

            Socrates
Now, by causing him to doubt and giving him the torpedo's shock, have we done him any harm?

            Meno
I think not.

            Socrates
And we have certainly given him some assistance, it would seem, towards finding out the truth of the matter: for now he will push on in the search gladly, as lacking knowledge; whereas then he would have been only too ready to suppose he was right in saying, before any number of people any number of times, that the double space must have a line of double the length for its side.

            Meno
It seems so.

            Socrates
Now do you imagine he would have attempted to inquire or learn what he thought he knew, when he did not know it, until he had been reduced to the perplexity of realizing that he did not know, and had felt a craving to know?

            

            Meno
I think not, Socrates.

            

            Socrates
Then the torpedo's shock was of advantage to him?

            

            Meno
I think so. (Meno 84a-c)

(“Aporein” and its various inflections are transated into perplexity or doubt in this passage.)

But how is this different from a koan, from the ways in which Eastern forms deal with perplexity? For one, the Platonic dialectic attempts to lead the pupil to specific knowledge, first about his or her ignorance, and eventually to an answer. The western pupil can't achieve the answer until s/he realizes ignorance (but, importantly, an answer is ultimately achievable). 

The Eastern version of dialogue, if we use the example of the koan as representative form, seeks the opposite: the goal is to reach ignorance of the subject by realizing that the subject is always a product of (and this is what changes throughout history so fill in the blank) conceptual frames, dualisms, epistemological constructs, ________. Put another way, "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."

What does this have to do with Veeder? Well consider this quote:

Zen is the practice of preparing the mind for a moment of realization, and Zen practices encourages constant inquiry in preparation for a realization about a question or a problem rather than an answer. This is exploring rather than explaining and meaning making rather than answering....the art of Zen practice has to do with the performance of contemplating the questions that created the frame-or the background against which the the drama of questioning is performed. 

Especially this part:

The art of Zen practice has to do with the performance of contemplating the questions that created the frame-or the background against which the the drama of questioning is performed. 

Western epistemologies, as long as they are mired in Platonic rhetorics ("the will to truth"), do not question the frame/the background/the medium (here’s where McLuhan's book/mantra "The Medium is the Message" relates). Instead, they see perplexity or aporia as an absence of some "truth" or knowledge. By demonstrating the effect of aporia as a means to truth, Plato has ensured the place of knowable subject beyond/above mental and discursive frameworks that Eastern epistemologies position as constructing the subject. What Veeder is trying to get us to do is to challenge the (platonic) ways we “know.”

Works Cited

Heine, Steven. Introduction. Opening a Mountain: Kōans of the Zen Masters. By Heine. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 1-37. Print.

Plato. The Dialogues of Plato. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. New York: Random House,1937. Print.

Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki, eds. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Boston: Shambhala,1994. Print.

Veeder, Rex. "Re-reading Marshal McLuhan: Hectic Zen, Rhetoric, and Composition." Enculturation 20 Dec. 2011. Web.